Palestinian parents fear for children's lives as settler attacks surge in West Bank

On the first morning of the new Palestinian school year, the head-teacher of al-Mughayyir boys school arrived before dawn, walking past freshly installed barbed wire and reinforced gates as the sun crept through the olive trees that surround the village deep inside the occupied West Bank. The fortifications, meant to reassure fearful parents, are a stark measure of the terror that has gripped this community. "We are scared," Bassam al-Assaf told the BBC. "The students are afraid, and their parents are afraid." Six people, including three pupils at the school, have been killed in al-Mughayyir this year in a surge of settler-related violence. Among them was 14-year-old Aws al-Naasan, shot dead by a settler outside the school gates in April, an attack that has come to symbolise the growing peril facing Palestinian children in the West Bank.

English teacher Waheed Abu Naem, whose brother Jihad was killed by an Israeli soldier in the same April attack, described the chaos that unfolded that day. "I was inside my classroom and two little students came rushing to tell me there were settlers close to the school wall," he recalled. He was trying to move pupils to safety inside the gate when the settler fired towards them. Mobile phone footage captured the moment Aws was shot. "When I turned him onto his back, I saw lots of blood coming from his nose and mouth, and the bullet in his head," said Waheed. "We lost him." Bullets continued to strike the school building as students hid behind classroom walls or lay on the floor. The Israeli military said at the time that stones had been hurled at a car carrying "civilians including a reservist soldier" and that the reservist had got out and fired at suspects. Israeli media reported the reservist was later suspended from duty and an investigation launched.

Since that day, the casualties have grown alongside parents' fears. Over the summer, two more pupils were shot dead by Israeli forces during settler attacks and incursions in the village, along with a 19-year-old who had just left the school. In both cases, the army said its forces had responded to instigators of "a violent riot". With three empty desks now in the classrooms, some parents were reluctant to send their children back for the new school year. The school sits on the edge of al-Mughayyir, an isolated village north-east of Ramallah increasingly encircled by Jewish settler outposts and regularly blocked by Israeli forces operating an ad-hoc checkpoint at the entrance. Bassam al-Assaf has installed a long barbed-wire fence and reinforced gates to try to reassure parents. Ambulance crews now station themselves on the road outside, and several parents have volunteered to remain outside the school all day as an extra layer of protection.

"I came because it makes the children feel their parents are with them, that they are safe, it gives them a kind of security," said Haroon Bishara, whose boys are in the first and second grades. "We fear for our children more this year," he told the BBC. "We know the situation is not safe at the school." Yet he said that fear was mixed with a determination not to let the threat from settler attacks force them out. Lined up in the playground for their first assembly, pupils heard teachers repeat instructions again and again: if soldiers or settlers approach the school, don't shout, don't go near them, don't react. Just over an hour after classes began, settlers were spotted through the school windows: two men driving sheep through Palestinian fields a couple of hundred metres away, as Israeli soldiers stood close by. Minutes later, another settler with a flock appeared. "They have got closer to the village since April," said Abu Naem. "They used to keep their sheep behind this [hill], but now the soldiers bring the settlers up to the village."

All Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are illegal under international law, and many of the small ad-hoc settler outposts that have mushroomed around al-Mughayyir are also illegal under Israeli law. But one of the ambulance crews stationed outside the school said that, rather than remove these outposts, Israeli soldiers had begun supporting and enabling settler incursions into the village. Hadi al-Naasan, an ambulance driver, said there had been a clear shift in the behaviour of Israeli forces over the past year. "At the beginning of 2025, settler attacks were few, due to the army's interventions," he said. "In 2026, the situation changed completely: the settlers became fully protected by the occupation soldiers. This year, the number of martyrs is higher, the number of injuries is also much higher—and the number of child injuries is higher too." Hadi, along with other residents, believes that some settlers are now deliberately targeting children to put pressure on adults to leave their homes.

A UN Commission of Inquiry report published in June found that settler attacks "have instrumentalized children as part of a broader coercive strategy to drive Palestinians off their land." It described "a pattern of settlers intentionally targeting Palestinian children" while they were playing near their homes, walking to and from school, tending farms or herding livestock, "turning everyday spaces into sites of fear." Israel dismissed the report as a "libellous sham". Sheep farmer Sami Abu Rahma firmly believes that some violent settlers are targeting children. At the end of July, his nine-year-old son Salim was shot and injured as he played with his siblings on the family farm outside al-Mughayyir. The bullet remains lodged in his arm. Footage from security cameras shows Salim pointing and shouting to his parents that settlers are approaching, before running for shelter with his siblings and mother, as two gunshots are heard. Salim is seen grabbing his shoulder.

"In that moment, you stop thinking; you just feel fear," Sami told the BBC. "Fear that, God forbid, [the attacker] was shooting to kill. The first thing in your mind is losing the most precious thing you have." The man who shot his son, he said, lived in an illegal settler outpost that appeared next to the farm in June—and had previously shot at Salim in the same area a week before. "You no longer feel you can keep them safe in the street, or even at school," he said. "The settlers don't want us to stay here, [they want us to feel] as if there's no future for us here." Sami said he was the last sheep farmer left in the area, the others all chased away by settler attacks. The settler who shot his son had told the family repeatedly to leave their land. "No matter how determined you might be to stay," he added, "what do you do when settlers start shooting your kids?"

The regional settlers council told the BBC that an off-duty soldier was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the shooting. "We regret any harm to innocent people, Jews or Arabs, and oppose any act of violence that violates the law," it said in a statement, adding that it rejected "the attempt to attribute to the entire settlement community in Judea and Samaria acts that have not yet been determined by an investigation, as well as the baseless claim that lawful sheep grazing or Jewish presence in the area are part of a deliberate plan to harm children or drive residents from their homes." Al-Mughayyir is part of a pattern unfolding across the occupied West Bank, with more illegal outposts encircling Palestinian villages, more protection for settlers from Israeli forces, and attacks moving from farms and grazing land to built-up areas where women and children are more at risk.

UN figures suggest that the number of Palestinians injured during attacks by Israeli forces or settlers has risen sharply this year to an average of three injuries per day, with the number of injuries inflicted directly by settlers themselves also higher. This rise has accompanied an expansion of Israeli settlements and outposts in the West Bank. Israel's government, fiercely supportive of settlements, is under growing international pressure, including from the UK, which is expected to announce sanctions in response to settlement policies. The arrest of some violent settlers and a reported plan by Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to dismantle illegal outposts have not so far stopped attacks, nor reassured Palestinians who say outposts previously demolished by Israeli authorities were quickly rebuilt. With Israeli elections less than two months away, the Finance Ministry pushed forward plans this week to take over land registration in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, described by the Israeli settlement monitor Peace Now as "a clear step towards annexation." Netanyahu has attributed settler violence to a tiny extremist minority, describing them in a recent television interview as "150 juvenile delinquents". Since the beginning of 2025, the UN has recorded 316 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces or settlers to the end of July 2026, and more than 5,600 injured. It says 20 Israelis were killed over the same period, including one child and eight security force members, and 123 Israelis injured. For parents who have stayed in villages like al-Mughayyir through escalating violence, the question is no longer whether they can endure, but whether they can keep their children alive if they remain on their land.